


A Place Called Nowhere

by TellTaleTypist



Category: Original Work
Genre: Apocalypse, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Horror, Surreal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28117857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TellTaleTypist/pseuds/TellTaleTypist
Summary: Two young siblings wander a dying world, surviving, avoiding monsters, searching for meaning in the void.
Comments: 1





	1. Chapter 1

The path took Lucy and her brother to an old abandoned farm. Lucy had seen many such relics of the old world on her travels, but something about the rolling fields of dead crops stretching out into the foggy horizon caught her eye. She stopped by the old wooden fence, eaten away with rot and moss, and took in the sight. The crops had grown wild with neglect, and other plants had begun to overtake them. She saw off in the distance an impressive farmhouse. At one point, it must have been a beautiful home for the owners of this land, but now it stood derelict and abandoned. The landscape was as drab and grey as everything else in the world had become. Even the living plants had taken on a sickly dark color, even though she could remember them once being green. Lucy wondered if she had ever been to this place before, when things still made sense. It was impossible to know for sure, now. Nothing was where it once was. She would have given anything for the chance to go investigate that old house, find some traces of the old world, but it was dangerous to stray from the path, and Lucy knew this perfectly well.

Lucy’s younger brother, Matt, stopped beside her with an air of impatience. He hated when she got caught up in her imaginings.

“Hey,” he said, “what’s the matter with you? Why are you stopping all of a sudden?”

Lucy continued to stare out wistfully for a moment, then said, “am I not allowed to catch my breath?”

“Don’t get mad at me, this whole adventure was your idea, remember.” Matt leaned against the fence, taking caution when he heard it creek and strain against his weight. “If I had my way, we would’ve stayed at that settlement we found yesterday. I’d take a warm bed and a nice meal over sleeping outside with one eye open any day.”

“No one said you had to come with. I know what I’m doing is dangerous.”

“Oh stop it. I’ll follow you wherever you go. I just wish I knew where that was, and why.”

“Me too,” said Lucy, and then started walking again.

Matt sighed and followed along.

As they moved the rolling flat plains gave way to a forest. The forest overtook fields once used for agriculture. Old houses sat covered in weeds, trees growing around and enveloping their frames. The trunks were twisted and black, the branches stretched out in unnatural, weblike patterns that interlocked and blocked out all vision of the sky. Lucy took care to be mindful of her surroundings. There were many places in the growing darkness and dense foliage for something to hide. Hostile creatures abounded in the space between settlements, those pockets of sanity and civilization that probably house most of the people that remained. There weren’t many people crazy enough to do what Lucy and Matt were doing, traveling through these no man’s lands of reality.

They came upon a massive tree root that blocked their path and towered overhead. If they wanted to stay on the path, they needed to climb it. The wood was cold to the touch, smooth yet hard like alligator skin. The two children slipped their nimble fingers into the deep grooves in the wood and made their way up. As she climbed, Lucy heard a noise. It was quiet and far away, yet persistent in the back of her perception. A song. Sung in a voice as youthful an innocent as her own. It was too distant for Lucy to make out any words but the melody was simple, short, yet haunting. A melancholy tune that seemed to beckon Lucy. She longed to hear more, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It was so quiet, in the suffocating silence of the forest, that Lucy seemed to hear it inside her own head. 

“Matt!” Lucy called, tightening her hold on the tree trunk.

“What?” Matt called back from below her. Lucy didn’t want to look down but she could tell he was close.

“Do you hear singing?”

“Singing? In these woods? No I don’t. Seems like a bad idea to me. Why, do you?”

Lucy said nothing. Perhaps the song was simply in her head. She didn’t like it. Hearing things was a bad sign anywhere, but it could be deadly out here. A breeze blew through the branches and the song seemed to dissipate beneath the noises of the woods.

They climbed further up the tree, above the branches where they could see the landscape fully. The black forest stretched out as far as they could see in every direction. There was no sign of the flat plains of the farm lands they had walked through earlier today. The land had shifted and the forest had overtaken everything around. Thick grey clouds spiraled endlessly above them. A few merciful breaks brought patches of pale sunlight to the dreary landscape.

Matt sat upon a branch and rummaged through his bag. “Well, I’m hungry,” he said, “If you’re gonna stop to admire the view, I’m gonna grab something from our supplies.”

It had been a while since they’d eaten that morning, and Lucy was starting to feel the groans of hunger in her belly. Together, they sat and ate some biscuits they’d received from a kind old lady, who had given them shelter back at the last settlement. Lucy liked that old woman. Her presence brought to mind a pleasant nostalgia for Lucy. Fragments of memories. Feelings and sensations, and only the faintest glimmer of the sights and sounds. A warm house. A sky, bright and blue. A world that was rich and colorful and alive. Lucy could almost remember home, and she had even started to wonder if she’d found the place she was looking for.

A gasp from Matt snapped Lucy out of her trance. 

“What is that?” he said, pointing to a distant patch of white in the forest below. 

Lucy leaned in and squinted to see what he was talking about. It appeared to be a spider’s web. At this distance, it had to be massive, spanning the entire surface of a clearing in the trees. There were a series of dark spots that Lucy realized with horror were bodies in the web, wriggling and writhing in desperation. Other travelers, like them. More people appeared in the clearing, dozens of them. They marched single mindedly to the web and each fell in one by one. A spider appeared at the edge of the web and started wrapping the struggling bodies in its web and leaving them to suffocate. 

Matt blew a curious whistle and said, “well would you look at that.” He took another bite from his biscuit. “What do you make of it?”

Lucy forced down a nauseous feeling in her stomach. “Some form of mind control, I think. They seem to be in a trance or something. The spider is luring them in somehow.”

“Poor suckers.”

“We must have seen this for a reason. Nothing is accidental. It’s an omen.” Lucy stood up and looked to the black branches reaching up to the sky like a thousand sickly hands in prayer. “We should be careful going forward. I don’t feel good about being here at all.” 

They climbed down the tree and resumed their journey. There was an impenetrable stillness that hung over everything around them. Lucy couldn’t get the spiderweb out of her head as she walked. Could it really be so easy to lure travelers off their paths? What had the spider done to the heads of those travelers to make them march so blissfully to their doom? It was harrowing to think that at any moment, they could be led astray by some unknowable force.

Then Lucy heard the singing again. 

She froze where she stood, letting Matt overtake her before he looked curiously back at her. The song was louder in Lucy’s head this time, now she could make out the voice singing it. It sounded like a child, repeating a simple melody that echoed through the empty woods. A sinking dread took hold of Lucy as the song aroused something in her. A deep longing was ignited. It built and built as the tone played out.

Lucy fought against the feeling the song dredged up inside her. Visions coalesced in her mind and formed memories of her home that she thought had been long buried. Nostalgia. It was baked into the melody of the tune itself. It was like she had heard it somewhere before, as if it carried a deep significance to her past. Perhaps the song carried the answers she'd been seeking on her journey. What she'd wanted all this time was a way to return to her home.

Lucy's body shook all over with the effort to fight off the growing influence the song had over her. It was an illusion. It was bait. That's all it was. It was rewriting her memories to insert itself into her thoughts of home. Yet could she really be sure? She saw it so clearly, how her mother had sang the song to her. She could see her mother's angelic face so clearly now.

"Lucy?" Matt walked over, placing his hands on his sister's shoulders. She was struggling against something, doubled over and grabbing her head. "Lucy, you're scaring me. What's wrong?"

An avalanche of memories crashed into Lucy's mind. Things she'd forgotten long ago sprung forth with full clearity as though they had happened yesterday. Tears ran down Lucy's cheeks. The song in her head embedded itself so deep in her memories that they became inseparable. On her mind, the song was synonymous with a time when she felt loved and wanted. When she had a place in the world, and a future to look forward to.

Lucy took a step off the path, trying to find the source of the song, to hear more of its infectious melody. If she could do that, she could return to her life as it was meant to be. She felt like she could almost reach out and grab it, that vision of the past. If she could just get a little closer.

Matt's hand shot out and grabbed Lucy's wrist. He was shocked and confused that she would ever try to step off the path. She was in some kind of trance. He pulled her in and hugged her tight from behind. She kept pulling towards that spot somewhere off the path but Matt wouldn't let her go.

In the thick of the woods ahead of them, in the darkness amongst the trees that surrounded them on either side of the path, something stirred. A rustling in the gray leaves. The glint of an eye hiding between the branches. Something watched the two children from the shadows, wondering what was holding up its next meal. A song was echoing around them. The thing in the woods ruffled its black feathers in anticipation.

Matt froze with terror. He stared into the darkness ahead of him, still clutching onto Lucy. His hands were shaking, his legs went numb. In his fear, he lost his grip and Lucy slipped through. She ran into the woods, leaving Matt alone.

"Lucy!" he screamed, chasing her into the dark.

They were gone. The woods stood empty.

-

Lucy played out in the fields, running between the towers of wheat that rose high above her head and hid her from the wide, open world around. Despite the bright, clear sky, the space between the wheat cast shadows that were deceptively dark. Her mom called out to her to come inside, but Lucy stayed hidden in the crops. She loved to make the adults look around for her, knowing they couldn't find her. It made her feel cozy, even as she sat in the dirt surrounded by the scratchy plant.

Lucy’s mom walked out to the fields, smiling to herself. She began to sing Lucy’s favorite song, the one they sang together at nights when Lucy couldn’t get to sleep. From her hiding spot amongst the wheat, Lucy began to sing along. She couldn’t help herself. Her mom quickly found her and picked her up onto her shoulders. 

Lucy often had trouble sleeping. She had terrible dreams of a dying world. A world that was cruel and lonely and colorless. She mentioned these dreams a lot to her mother, who would smile and tell her that it was just a bad nightmare. Lucy's mom carried her all the way to the farm house where her grandmother was sitting by the window. Lucy's mom set her down and she ran over to her grandmother to give her a hug. When she asked her grandma what she was doing by the window, her grandma responded that she was bird watching. She picked Lucy up onto her lap and pointed out the window. A pair of crows sat on a tree branch outside, peering back at them. Watching.

The crows had an aura about them that unsettled Lucy, and she quickly climbed off of her grandmother’s lap to get away. The three of them shared some biscuits together and spent the day chatting away and playing. When night had fallen at last, and it was time for Lucy to go to bed, her mom tucked her in and sang that sweet song one last time. The melody was sweet and hopeful, but carried a tinge of melancholy to it. It soothed Lucy. That song was present in all of Lucy’s most pleasant memories. Her mom bent over to kiss her goodnight. Her mother departed from the room, extinguishing the lights on her way out. Lucy was alone, in the darkness. 

Lucy tried to get some sleep, but found that she couldn't. The darkness in her room came with an oppressive sense of disquiet. She lay in the bed with her eyes wide open, feeling like she was floating in a void. Her room was intangible, a distant memory that she couldn't picture, it felt as alien to her as the distant lands in her picture books. The night sky outside her window had no stars and no moon. She sat up, pressed her face to the cold glass, and tried to see the world outside. Tried to picture it in her mind, and found that she could not. She found herself unable to picture anything of her life. The faces of her mother and grandmother. The world outside this farm. All of it was blank in her mind's eye. A powerful fear gripped her as she sat alone in her bed, surrounded by nothing. The cold glass on her face was the only sense that kept her grounded. Slowly, that too began to fade, as did the feeling of her soft sheets, and suddenly, Lucy was falling.

Lucy had no sense of the direction of her fall. There was no up or down, only the feeling of tumbling violently through the void. In the chaos, Lucy saw the only light visible. Two pin pricks, the glint of a pair of black eyes looking up at her, watching her fall towards it. Lucy felt a gaping maw open before her. She felt a hot, moist breath envelop her as she fell. She felt the change that had been made in her. How her memories had been reshaped by this thing, all to bring her here. Helpless, she realized her doom. She flailed desperately for something to hold onto. She felt a hand grab her's. She held onto it as it pulled her up and away from that thing. Loud angry fluttering filled her ears, like a thousand bird taking off and swarming around her. Up and up she was pulled, until, at last, light returned to her eyes.

Lucy and Matt emerged into a large, open field. There were no trees in sight. The forest was gone, replaced now with a flat, wet, grassy plain beneath a yellow sky, black clouds swarming around them. There was a stillness in the air as they sat, breathing heavily. Lucy felt the wet, muddy ground beneath her. This world was real. Tangible, in the way the other world couldn't be. There was a weight to this world. Something She didn't notice when it wasn't there, but could feel its presence now that it was. This world was dying, but it was real.

Matt gathered himself, panting heavily. He said, "are you okay, Lucy?"

Lucy turned over onto her back. She watched the dark clouds swirl above her. "I don't know," she said. "I thought I saw home."

"Home?"

"Yeah, a farm. Mom was there. At least I think it was her. Now I don't know anymore. I can't remember anything but that dream."

"It was just a hallucination. Whatever that thing was, it just wanted to lure you in and eat you. It's lucky I was able to get to you in time."

Matt, got to his feet and scanned the field around them. Only now did it occur to Lucy how weird it was that Matt hadn't featured in her dream at all. She watched him as he searched for a path forward, sweat building on his face. Who was this boy anyway? Were they siblings after all? Lucy had no memory of how they met in the first place, he had just always been there.

Matt found a winding dirt path in the grass and they shambled to it and pressed on. No use lingering. It was dangerous to stay off the path for long. What was it they were moving toward, Lucy wondered. She began to think it was a mistake to venture out into the wilderness.

"Matt?"

"Yeah, what is it?"

"Why are you following me? It's not like I have a plan or anything."

"Because you're my sister. I'll follow you to wherever it is you're headed. There's nothing else for me otherwise."

That simple, huh, Lucy thought. She suddenly felt very cold. The openness of the field was oppressively lonely. Perhaps there would be a settlement nearby if they just pressed up ahead. Lucy began to think of staying at the next settlement permanently. What life would that be? A safer life, perhaps, for a time anyway. Tucked away in a little corner of reality, living in ignorance and waiting. Waiting for the end. They all fall eventually.

No. Better to press on. There was something out there somewhere. Calling to her. A promise of answers, of purpose and meaning in the void. She was sure she would find that thing eventually, if she just pressed on a little longer. Reached out a little further. She would find it.

Or they both would be swallowed by the void.


	2. Chapter 2

A rut can be a dangerous thing to get stuck in, especially with someone else to feed the pattern. In Nowhere, depression, decay, and emptiness are alive. They consume and transform the people caught in it. Life becomes a meaningless blur. This is what happened to John and Robert, two roommates living in an apartment high above a city long abandoned. They had forgotten the circumstances that brought them together some time ago. They remembered that Robert was the one who came to John’s dingy apartment looking for a place to live. Robert had a path in life that brought him here, one governed by desperation and a lack of resources. John, however, was rooted to the spot he was in. A stagnant thing, with no purpose or direction in life. John and Robert found they brought out the best in each other. In John, Robert found a sense of stability, a home. In Robert, John found a reason to move and explore the world. These are the memories they kept with each other even after the collapse began.

The decay of reality happened slowly at first. Nobody noticed it coming. Then, all at once, everything seemed to fall apart. Time and space held no meaning any longer and entire communities would vanish overnight into the encroaching mist. In the city, many braved the streets in search of more stable places to live. Robert would’ve been among them had John not intervened to stop him. The world was ending. The weight of that realization crushed John. They were adrift and alone in an unending sea churning with malevolent force, threatening to capsize them and send them plummeting into oblivion. Robert wanted to jump overboard and try to swim to shore. John held Robert tight. Begged him to stay put. This apartment was their refuge. It had been before the collapse, and it would stay that way forever., if only they would stay together. So Robert stayed, enjoying the stability of the warm apartment, with John at his side. They clung together, as reality collapsed around them. As their memories faded. As the city outside their window disappeared and showed only the swirling, dark mist where the world once was. They held each other so long that their bodies began to twist and morph together. They coalesced into a single form, growing and growing until they filled the single room of their apartment. Eventually, they forgot that they were ever different people. They forgot that there was ever a world outside of this apartment, that fell further and further into disrepair. They couldn’t distinguish between their own thoughts, they thought as one.

This is the state they were in when, one day, a knock came at their door. They were alarmed by the sound. They shuffled and squirmed until one of their arms was at the long unused door knob. With difficulty, they twisted it and opened the door, craning their necks until one of their heads could see their visitors. Two children, a girl and a boy, their skin was dark and their hair was a tangled mass of curls. They looked tired, worn, and ragged, their jackets were tattered and had scraps that hung off them. The children, on the other hand, saw a terrifying creature with two faces, both twisted in a grim mockery of humanity. They stood in frozen terror for a moment. Somewhere in the roommates’ collective minds it felt a pang of pity at the helplessness of the children. 

The girl waited for the creature to do something, but it only sat there, watching them with its blank, hollow eyes. After a moment, she decided that the creature had no intent to harm them.

“H-hello,” she ventured, “I’m Lucy, this is my brother, Matt.”

“Why are you talking to it?” Matt whispered to her.

“We were hoping to find a settlement in this city,” she continued, ignoring him, “but we lost our path. Do you know of any here?”

John and Robert attempted to speak, to tell them that there were no settlements here, to their knowledge. To apologize to these children, who must have come a very long way to get here. However, they had not spoken to a living soul in quite a long time - they had no need to speak to each other anymore - and so had long ago forgotten how to speak at all. They gargled and rasped out of their mouths, their words stuck on their tangled throats, and they said nothing that the children could understand.

The noises alarmed the children. Matt made a move to leave but Lucy kept her place before the door. Realizing she had no intention of leaving, Matt reluctantly stayed in place, fearing the worst.

The creature made another attempt to speak to the children. They tried harder and harder to form words in their malformed, slack mouths. Again, they made no sound that Lucy or Matt could recognize as speech. 

“Lucy, can we please just get out of here?” said Matt, backing into the wall behind him.

Lucy only looked on at the creature, curious at its human-like features and clear attempts to communicate. It wasn’t a monster, that was for sure. Could it be a person?

John and Robert grew embarrassed by the encounter, and increasingly wanted the children to leave them. They wanted to be alone together and forget the world outside their apartment again. They writhed and struggled to close the door, but Lucy pushed it open and stepped in.

"Lucy!" Matt reached out to grab his sister but missed as she walked in. "Are you crazy? Let's get out of here!"

Lucy walked cautiously in the limited space of the apartment, taking care not to step on any of the creature's limbs that sat tangled upon the floor. 

"Why did the path take us here," she said to herself. "There has to be a reason. Nothing is accidental."

Somewhere in the roommates’ minds the thought, _can't they just go away_ , rattled. They didn't know which of the two of them had thought it, but the thought, _I want to help them; I feel bad for them_ , answered back. Their body twisted to bring one of their faces closer to Lucy's. She flinched. A pair of wide eyes stared into her, mouth hanging open. The skin of their face was pulled back by the tight coiling of their necks. The two roommates hadn't seen another person in a long time. They'd forgotten what people looked like. 

Lucy was backed against the wall as the creature towered over her, its four eyes staring into her. Her eyes darted back and forth between the creature’s two faces. She looked the creature all over, frantically taking in its harrowing appearance. The mass of flesh that was wrinkled and tied together like a grotesque, rubbery knot. The noodly limbs strewn about the floor, overlapping each other like fleshy cables. The creature backed away, noticing the fear in Lucy’s demeanor. Lucy relaxed a little and started to study the apartment. It was dingy and small, a thick layer of dust covered everything. Lucy noticed the desks that were shoved messily against the wall and forgotten. There were framed photographs on them. She reached over to wipe the dust off and saw that they showed two normal looking men, very close and happy. They must have been from before the decay of reality. She looked back over to the creature huddled in the corner. She studied its two faces. She felt her own pang of pity for the creature.

She straightened up and asked, summoning all her confidence, “can you show us the way through this city. We’re lost.”

The two roommates thought on the question for a moment. Then, they stood up on something resembling their feet and shambled their way up and out the apartment, squeezing through the door. Matt screamed and pressed himself against the wall to avoid touching their sweaty skin. As John and Robert shambled down the hall, they made a noise that even Lucy and Matt could recognize as a call to follow. Slowly, with much trepidation, Lucy and Matt followed John and Robert down the hall, down the stairs and out onto the streets.

The fog between the buildings was impenetrable, blown along by a cold wind that whistled through the streets and alleys. John and Robert felt a strange satisfaction being outside again for the first time in an impossibly long time. They shivered as the cold air brushed their naked skin. They rolled and crawled their way down the streets, following the points where the thick fog seemed to break and give way to some visibility. This was the only indication of where a path could be headed. Lucy and Matt followed along. For them, there had been no such breaks in the fog. Their path became obscured among the labyrinthine layout of the city. 

As they all crossed a wide intersection they heard a rumbling. It rattled the streetlamps and shook the ground they stood on. Lucy and Matt looked between each other as the rumble grew more intense. The two roommates continued their crawl, unperturbed, until it was at the middle of the wide intersection. 

A horrible screech sounded as the rumbling hit its peak. A pair of wild, glowing eyes appeared in the mist. The rumble grew into a cacophonous thunder as a half-rotted bull charged towards them. It rammed into John and Robert, its horns jamming into their side with full force. The impact sent them flying hard enough to separate the two into pathetic, flailing masses of flesh that came crashing down as the bull charged off. The whole thing happened faster than Lucy or Matt could process.

John lay on the street, splayed out with his spindly limbs stretched from one corner to the other. Robert hung from a lamppost behind Matt, his fingertips stretching down and grazing the pavement. John reeled from the impact and his violent separation from his roommate. He struggled to pick his head up, but his feeble noodle of a neck was too weak to lift the weight of his skull. 

Lucy walked over to John, stepping around the scattered strings of his arms and legs that filled the intersection. She knelt down to meet his eyes. They were filled with shock. A thin puddle of drool dribbled from his mouth, which was open wide enough for his jaw to touch the pavement despite his head facing straight upwards. A pained gurgle sounded from him. Lucy looked over to Matt, who was poking at Robert's rubbery torso hanging from the lamp.

John felt a distinct emptiness eating away at him without Robert. It dawned on him how cold the world was without Robert's warmth, how helpless he was without his strength. He let out a stifled cry as tears dripped from his eyes. Lucy watched the man before her weep, his malformed features twisted in a haunting display of agony. She reached out to touch his forehead, flinching before his tight, rubbery skin before gently placing her hand on him in a comforting gesture.

Matt grabbed one of Robert's arms and disinterestedly yanked his body off the lamppost, sending him crashing down with a dull thud. Robert let out a pained groan. He grabbed Robert by his wrist and dragged him over to Lucy and John. Robert shot a glare towards Matt, who ignored him.

Matt and Lucy gathered John and Robert up into neat little coils and carried them, each taking one of the men. They walked along the path before them, taking care to stick to the sidewalk.

The path took them all into the old subways beneath the city. Platforms floated freely in the dark space, train tracks winding above, below and between them. A cacophony of sounds boomed in all their ears as the locomotives rushed along their twisted little paths. Lucy and Matt carefully jumped between platforms, timing their jumps to avoid getting hit by the rushing trains between them. The platforms bumped and bobbed with their shifting weight. 

Lucy jumped first, Matt followed. Over and over again. Carefully. Methodically. Avoiding the trains. Neither knew where they were headed, or how long they were going to carry the two strange men they'd found. 

Lucy stumbled on a stray piece of loose concrete, sending her flying onto an adjacent platform just as a train passed by, separating her from Matt. She hit the next platform so hard it was sent flying through the void. They lost sight of each other.

"Matt!" Lucy got up and shouted into the dark, but the platform was falling further and further away from the others. 

Matt stood, frozen and alone in the void, his sister gone. Robert sat on his back, drooling, trying to say something, slowly remembering the words. 

"John!" he tried to say, "where is he? What happened?"

Matt only heard grunts and moans, and was beginning to get annoyed by the feeling of wet spit on his back. He stared up. Nothing but blackness, no hint of a ceiling. No telling how deep they had gone. He looked down. Same story. His sister was gone. Lost in the gaping void. He was alone, and worse, without purpose. No one to follow.

Robert was engulfed with terror. He had just watched the most important person in the world to him disappear into the darkness without a trace. After spending so long merged into one, they were each alone and at the mercy of a warped and dying world. Matt’s feet were rooted to the spot. Robert’s were noodly and useless anyway. They were helpless.

There was a time when Robert had drifted freely around. In a world long forgotten, in a time much saner and kinder than this one. He’d had no home, and no family. That older version of him was better suited to survive in this new world than he was now. John had changed him. Given him a home. He grew into John, grew roots that tethered him to the spot, their branches intertwined. There was no going back to how he was. No way for him to undo the ways John had altered him. He longed to be free again, but he was unsure if he ever could be now.

Matt looked over the platform, the toes of his shoes hanging off the edge. He noticed a thick black cable running out from below the platform and up into the darkness above. It looked sturdy enough to hold a person’s weight. Matt followed the cable with his eyes. He stared up into the darkness, wondering how far it went. There was no telling if his strength could hold out long enough to reach the surface again. Robert followed Matt’s eyes, and guessed what he was thinking. Escape. Right now, escape was all Robert would let himself think about now. He wanted to keep moving, even if his own legs couldn’t. Matt thought only of seeing Lucy again. If she could survive down there, she would find a way to the surface. That’s where they’ll meet up again. He didn’t let himself consider the alternative.

Matt stepped down off the platform. He grabbed the cable and let himself slide off, trusting the cable to hold his weight. It was a dangerous gamble that paid off. Robert was startled by the motion. He wrapped his noodly arms around the cable to keep from falling down. They hung there, swinging in the darkness for a moment. Once Matt caught his breath, he started to shimmy up the cable. 

-

Lucy and John lay on the cold concrete. The platform descended into the darkness and they were powerless to stop it. John’s mind swam in a fog of fractured memories. In his mind he saw the first time he met Robert, the times they spent together before the collapse of reality, when everything became a blur. They had been together so long, their minds had melded together, memories fractured and shared. Now, John’s own memories were coming back, only his. He remembered Robert, for the first time in a long time, as someone separate from himself, the way he was the first time John saw him. Tired, alone, and very disheveled. John could tell Robert had lived a hard life, though, he tried to hide it under nice clothes and a carefree smile. He had come looking for a place to stay in the big city. He’d seen an ad John put out in search of a roommate. John’s circumstances had changed and he could no longer afford the apartment on his own. Already they needed each other, right from the very start. 

The platform touched down onto solid ground. John dimly felt the ground beneath him jostle suddenly. He was still lost in himself. Lucy stumbled onto her feet, glancing wildly around. They were in a vast cavern that expanded out in all directions. As she searched for a clear way forward, John thought more of Robert’s impact on him when they lived together. Robert was adventurous, impulsive, to an almost anarchic extent. He had profoundly upset the stability John was used to. At first, John resented him for it. Robert didn’t have a care in the world for anyone or anything. He would disappear for days on end only to turn up half conscious and nearly braindead, needing another day or so to recover. Eventually, John started to tag along out of sheer concern for Robert’s safety, and to keep him more restrained. John was surprised to realize how fun Robert could be to hang out with, how easy he was to talk to, how comfortable John was opening up to him. Robert didn’t have a single judgemental bone in his body, and wore his heart on his sleeve. That was when they really started to connect.

John wasn’t prepared to develop feelings for Robert the way he did. It happened before he was even aware of it, and the realization that he loved Robert hit him like a freight train. Robert was outgoing, adventurous, everything John wanted to be. He started going with Robert everywhere, no matter what he was doing. Robert didn’t mind, of course. He just enjoyed the company. He completely failed to notice how John felt about him, though. He was pretty self-absorbed, and didn’t spare much thought to the feelings of others. When John finally opened up to him about how he felt, Robert was caught completely off guard. He got incredibly flustered in a way that, in hindsight, John found very cute. 

Lucy decided to pick a direction at random and stick to it. She gathered John up, waking him suddenly from his reminiscing. She walked on and on for what felt like forever. There was a distinct possibility that they would be stuck here for all eternity. Lucy didn’t let herself consider such a possibility. For John, it was all he could think about. The prospect of never seeing Robert again terrified him more than the thought of dying. It was Robert that first got him to come out of his shell. To venture into the world and connect to the people in it. Before he had been his own little island in a vast, lonely sea. Then reality began to break down, and that awful mist consumed everything. That world he’d begun to connect too had suddenly collapsed around him, and that island became the only safe place for him to be. Robert always found it unnatural to stay in one spot. He had been so insistent on going out to take his chances. It was suicide to go out there, they both knew that. Perhaps Robert didn’t care, but John did. In the end, John convinced Robert to stay put, to live in John’s little world. John rooted him to the spot, tethered him. And they stayed in that place where nothing mattered. They lost themselves in it. 

Lucy finally approached the edge of the cavern. Before her stood the opening of a narrow cave. She went in. The place was damp and cold and very claustrophobic. Even finding a direct footpath was difficult with the uneven rocky terrain that partially buried a series of train tracks. Lucy leaned her hand on the adjacent wall beside her for balance and felt a series of thick cables running along it. John adjusted himself to tighten his grip on Lucy’s back. In this place, he suddenly felt more in danger than he ever had before. Despite the narrowness, the coldness, the inhuman loneliness, there was something indescribably alive in this place, like they had crawled into the mouth of a living creature and were now lost in its bowels. 

The place grew tighter and narrower as Lucy went on. Eventually, it grew so bad that she had to crawl on her hands and knees. Still, as she went on, she noticed the passage start to trend upwards. If she kept going, maybe she would reach the surface again and be reunited with Matt. 

Gradually, the passage grew steeper and tighter, until she was crawling straight up with the walls closing around her. She pressed her feet hard against the rock, trying to hold herself and John up through sheer pressure against an unforgivably smooth surface. Any protrusion on the surface was a blessing, it meant a place to rest her weight as she wriggled her way up, her hands fumbling in vain to find purchase. Progress slowed to a crawl at this point, and the crushing loneliness bore down on her as she contorted herself in any way she could to keep from slipping. Her muscles ached, the weight of both of them took its toll. There was no sign of the surface above her. 

John realized he was holding her back. He was keeping her in the cave just as he kept Robert in his apartment. Perhaps he and Lucy would share the same fate. Trapped in this cave forever, merged together in helpless complacency, their identities lost. There was no safety in that. It was a spiritual death. Another way for the void to consume you. John let himself slide from Lucy’s back, ready to embrace oblivion himself. Lucy shot her hand out and grabbed him. The force of the motion caused her to slip and she lost her grip on the walls. John caught her in his hand, his rubbery appendages keeping him tethered to the wall. He began to wriggle himself up the tunnel, Lucy dangling from his long, rubbery hand. His soft, noodly body had a much easier time getting through the crevasses than Lucy did. Lucy was shocked by the turn of events, but it came as a welcome break for her tired body. She let herself rest as John made his way up.

-

Matt climbed his way up the cable, carrying Robert on his back. The light of the outside world shone above, taunting him with the prospect of freedom. No matter how much Matt climbed, the light never got any closer, and he could feel his body getting ready to give out. Robert clung tighter to his back, anxious and impatient. Freedom lay just above their heads, yet this boy didn’t have the strength to reach it, and Robert himself was helpless. He wasn’t used to being so helpless. Pained him to think there was a time he could’ve survived out here alone, instead of having to depend on a child. Matt’s grip slipped. He began to fall, but Robert caught the cable before they could plummet. Death was waiting at their heels. It would take them both if they couldn’t find their way out of this place. The boy can’t do it on his own, Robert realized. He would need to do something, but what could he do in this state? 

Matt took hold of the cable again and began to climb. There was a crushing futility in his efforts that, on top of his fatigue, was sapping him of his will to go on. The light above stood defiantly still, refusing to budge to their efforts to reach it. Robert tightened his grip on Matt’s shoulder, causing Matt to grimace and pause in pain. There was no hope of them ever reaching the surface like this. Robert would not have his freedom, and he would never see John again if he kept clinging to this boy. The immeasurable time he spent clinging to John flashed before his eyes. The crushing isolation. The two of them, stuck together, unable to escape or move on. Unwilling to let go.

Robert unfurled himself from Matt’s torso and let himself fall.

“Hey!” Matt shouted after him, “what are you doing?!”

Silence. Robert disappeared into the darkness, leaving Matt alone, clinging to the cable in the cavernous void. 

A sound of flapping wings rose up from the darkness and broke the silence. A large eagle emerged at blinding speed.

“What-” it grabbed Matt by the shoulders as it soared through the air.

They reached the light and emerged into the open air beyond. The city stretched out beneath Matt’s feet, the misty air filled his nose. The eagle dropped him off on the streets below. Now Matt got a good look at it. It was twice as large as he was. Its feathers protruded from a layer skin that sloughed off in pieces as it stood. Its eyes were still recognizably human.

“I didn’t know you guys could do that.” Matt said, “wish you’d told me earlier.”

-

John crawled out of the narrow passageway, carrying Lucy in his loose, noodly arms. He let himself sink into an amorphous puddle. They both laid there, breathing heavily, taking in what had just happened. John marveled at the thing he just did. With his desiccated form, he pulled them both out of that seemingly infinite pit. He never would have done something like that before. After being stuck in one spot for such an enormous length of time, he had long since lost faith in his ability to do anything at all. His life was hollow, and still, like the rotted out corpse of a dead tree. Stuck but not growing, giving nothing. Robert came to him seeking shelter, but John provided none, only trapping him in place until he was as hollow as John. Where was Robert now, John wondered. Did he escape from that pit or is he still trapped inside, helpless. John decided that Robert probably did escape. After all, John had escaped, if he could do it, so could Robert. 

If Robert had indeed escaped, was it even worth it to try and find him? Perhaps he would be better off without John. He had, after all, had so much of his life stolen from him by John's cowardice. An eagle passed by, far above John. It's large wingspan blocked out the sunlight peeking through the thinning clouds. It was the first living animal John had seen in ages. It was calming to see such an animal flying so free. If Robert had found a way out of that pit, if he too realized he could move freely on his own, he would have no need for John. Robert would be a lot happier without him. 

John moved to his elbows and began to turn his soft body over. When he was on his flat, pancake of a stomach, he began to crawl away from Lucy. Robert could be free, but he couldn’t. He crawled back to the mouth of the pit he’d escaped from. He got the girl out, that was the important part. Now, he had nothing left. It would be better if he were alone. He’d find some dark secluded crevasse to hide in, and then disappear into the void, forgotten and alone. The eagle passed overhead again. It circled the area, surveying it. John felt its cool shadow block the warm sun. He kept crawling. 

The eagle swooped down, grabbed John in its talons, and swept him off the ground. The sudden air blew through John, his body flapping in the wind as he climbed higher and higher. Was this a monster? Was it going to take him away and devour him? John wanted to panic, but he no longer had the strength to do even that. What a joke, all that work to get out of the cave, only to be carried away by an oversized bird.

John brought his tired eyes up to see the creature carrying him. It wasn’t quite a bird, it only had the shape of one. Its skin peeled away more and more as it flew, revealing feathers underneath. Its eyes were recognizably human.

“Robert?” John said, his voice hoarse from disuse. 

The bird met his eye. The expression was warm and glad. Robert had returned for John after all. John gave the bird a tearful smile as they flew.

The first day that they met, Robert invited John to go out with him. He didn’t mention where they’d be going, he didn’t really know himself. He wanted to wander aimlessly, directionless and ready to discover whatever they happened to come across. And he wanted to do it in the company of a friend. John had admired Robert’s boldness, but refused at the time. He was afraid. He had always been afraid. He wanted to escape the confines of his little world but he didn’t know how to face the mists of uncertainty that lay outside it. 

Now, soaring through the air, feeling the wind around him, in the embrace of the man he loved, he wondered what he had ever been afraid of. He slipped free from Robert’s grasp. The wind carried him on. Piece by piece, he felt his useless flesh slough away, revealing feathers that carried him through the air.

-

Lucy watched as John and Robert flew away from the city, wondering what would become of them. She had no idea that people could transform like that. She thought only monsters were capable of such things. What did it all mean? What had happened to the world that could make something like this possible? Could this happen to her and Matt someday, if they spend too long wandering in its wastes? These were the thoughts that troubled Lucy as she made her way through the streets of the abandoned city. The structures loomed large over her, and wind passed freely through the shattered windows. She found Matt sitting on a curb, apparently waiting for either for the path to bring Lucy back to him, or for him to be eaten. Whichever came first. He seemed so helpless without her. What would happen if they also became as inseparable as John and Robert?

Matt jumped up excitedly when he noticed Lucy approaching. He ran over to hug her tight. Lucy felt the tears in his eyes and he pressed himself into her. She gave him the most reassuring smile she could conjure, and ran her hand over his hair in a comforting gesture.

When Matt had calmed down, they began to walk down the path once again, leaving the city behind them.


End file.
